Sharon Sass Scene II: Meeting the Wizards of OZ
There are rooms in this world built for conversation, and there are rooms built for something else entirely — rooms where the furniture has been arranged not for comfort but for advantage, where every cushion has been plumped with an agenda. Sharon, newly elected, newly certain of her own footing, had not yet learned to tell the two kinds apart. She would learn that evening, though by then the lesson would already have cost her something she could not quite name.
It began, as these things so often do, with the false intimacy of a first name.
TWO YEARS AGO:
WANDA
As you know Mrs. Sass.
SHARON
Please call me Sharon.
WANDA
Are you sure?
SHARON
Of course.
WANDA
Well, now that we're on a first name basis, let me bring you back to my private lair.
SHARON
Lair?
WANDA
Wendell calls it that…
She stands up, and walks toward a small, compact door. When she arrives at the door, she suddenly turns her body around.
WANDA
Join me in the Lair?
Of course she asked permission. A woman like Wanda always asks permission for the things she has already decided will happen — it is one of the great unspoken courtesies of the predatory classes, this performance of choice extended to those who have, in fact, no choice at all. Sharon followed, as one follows a hostess across any drawing room, never suspecting that this particular threshold had been chosen with the same care a trapper gives to the placement of a snare.
CUT TO:
INT. LAIR
Her husband, Wendell, is sitting on a couch already. He's smiling, delighted by her appearance.
WENDELL
Hello, Mayor Sass.
WANDA
She says we can call her Sharon.
WENDELL
You'll have to excuse my wife - she moves fast.
WANDAL
Shut up, Wendell.
WENDELL
That's why I like her.
WANDA
He's the type of guy who loves you more when you kick him in the nuts.
WENDELL
You'll have to excuse my wife. I let her be herself…I can't control her. She really is her own thing.
WANDA
Shut up, Wendell. (to Sharon) Excuse my husband - he always feels like he has to explain me, and you know what I tell him?
SHARON
What?
WANDA
You don't have to explain me. Shut the fuck up. He likes it when I say that because he's such an evil person. When I mistreat him, he feels like he deserves it. My only gripe though is he really does talk too much.
SHARON
Nice to meet you, finally.
WANDA
Our humor is very dry. You'll have to excuse us. (beat) When my ADD flares up - I just say how I feel…and it really makes me feel better.
WENDELL
Wanda has been seeing the best therapist in Beverly Hills. She's actually an Italian-German gal - quite insightful - her perspective is quite precise - she's done wonders for Wanda's depression.
WANDA
Turns out, you lie to yourself when you're depressed. I'm not doing that anymore. I see R E A L I T Y (beat, long uncomfortable silence). How about you, Sharon. Do you see R E A L I T Y?
enunciated in a dramatic, almost calculated manner - she never breaks eye contact with the mayor.
SHARON
Well, I learn as I go.
WANDA
Welcome to your new chapter, Sharon.
SHARON
Thank you.
Wanda examines her face, her clothes, her overall appearance.
WANDA
I would like to offer you the services of my design team.
SHARON
Design team?
WANDA
I have to charge you, though it will be a very good price…not quite free, but close enough.
SHARON
I could look at the proposal.
She makes eye contact with her husband.
WANDA
I also have a great face doctor - with his work, you can't even see it - he uses lasers and he focuses on the micro facial structure so it is totally undetectable - I can even have him get rid of this mole right here (she points to a beauty mark, like Marilyn monroe).
SHARON
Was there something you wanted to discuss in particular?
Wanda stares at her, then her husband, then she goes to sit down.
WANDA
Sit down, Sharon.
Sharon sits down.
WANDA
We all know how you really got elected, right? Where that money came from, right?
WENDELL
Don't worry. This room - kills all signal - you can't even record in here…I had it made -
WANDA
Shut the fuck up, Wendell.
Sharon laughs.
SHARON
Forgive me.
WANDA
Reality, Sharon. Why the fuck are you really mayor?
Sharon looks around the room. Wendell is staring at her.
SHARON
I better get going.
WANDA
Reality can't hide, Sharon. You are nothing without us - don't forget it.
Sharon looks at Wendell.
WENDELL
Good evening, Sharon. Enjoy the party.
It is a peculiar feature of certain marriages that the husband, far from softening his wife's cruelty, exists chiefly to translate it — to render the unspeakable speakable by means of a shrug and a smile, as though brutality, properly accessorized, might pass for charm. Wendell performed this office admirably. He apologized for Wanda in precisely the tone one might use to apologize for a particularly expensive and very dangerous dog, fond of the creature, unbothered by its teeth, faintly proud of what it might do to a stranger.
And Sharon — newly arrived, freshly addressed by her Christian name as though it were a gift rather than a leash — discovered, somewhere between the mole and the money, that she had been invited not to a conversation but to an appraisal. The lair, it turned out, was aptly named. One does not invite a guest into a lair to admire the décor. One invites them in to learn precisely how far the walls extend, and how very soundproof they have been made.